Author: Akhil Unnikrishnan

Socrates believed that death was a passage to another life. This would explain his calmness when he was sentenced to death. But Epicurus, born about sixty years after the death of Socrates, outright rejected the concept of an afterlife. He did not see death as being good or bad in itself. Being a materialist philosopher, death was just the end of sensation to him. Consider this thought by Epicurus:

“Death is nothing to us, for that which has been dissolved into its elements experiences no sensations, and that which has no sensation is nothing to us.”

What he meant was that, on dying, we stop feeling. Our senses stop working and the abstract concept that is “you” or “me”, the person, ceases to exist. From this point on, we feel nothing, so we don’t feel death at all.

I think that the concept of an afterlife or an eternal heaven is, in reality, a means of sating our fear of death. We want to believe that death is not the end. So if death is not the big bad thing that we thought it was, then that leaves us to our devices with nothing to fear. But that leaves us with a quandary. What to do with the time that we are alive?

You can spend your life in a way that minimizes your suffering. This is what The Buddha strived for. In Buddhist philosophy, it is not death that is the big bad thing. It is the endless cycle of rebirths and lives spent suffering that is to be avoided. It is not necessary to believe in this concept of reincarnations, but you can see the appeal of living a life with no suffering. Over in the world of Western philosophy, Epicurus and his school of philosophy called Epicureanism, also tried to live a life free of pain and suffering, with friends who would always stick by you.

So not only were there thousands of people thinking about death long before you and I, they were also thinking about the most basic of questions: how to lead a good life? The simply answer to that would be, while you are awaiting death, lead a life with deeds that make it a good life. Or as the Stoics would call it, a virtuous life. What meant by the term ‘virtuous’ is quite different from what the word would mean to us. A virtuous life was a life that was lived in accordance and in tune with nature and its flow. Not surprising, considering that they thought of the Universe as an all-encompassing God.

It is here that Stoicism diverged from Epicureanism and moves closer to Buddhism, in its total indifference to the events that happen in your life. Nothing that happens in your life is good or bad. By practising a strong detachment from everything, as in Buddhism, the Stoicists were able to remove emotional reactions from all events and view them as objective actions. The goal was not to be a rock without feelings, it was to treat every situation with the same calm and to experience happiness from any situation.

More than anything, Stoicism is a philosophy teaching us to be strong enough to endure anything and still be tranquil. As Lary Wallace writes,

“Joy and grief are still there, along with all the other emotions, but they are tempered – and, in their temperance, they are less tyrannical.”

This is a good way of living life, according to Stoics, because it acknowledges that life is not always a bed of roses and that there are events that might be labelled ‘good’ or ‘bad’, but you decide to look at them as just events.

But this does not mean that we simply while away our time detached from everything. It is about leading a life in accordance with nature, as the original Stoics said. That would need updating for our times, but it simply means that you go about your life, doing good deeds, and an indifference that would amaze mere mortals.

But what is a good deed? What separates it from a bad deed? What meaning or value, if any, does a good life hold? What meaning or value does our existence have? A discussion on that, next week.

Check in next week, for part 3 of this little meditation on life, death and everything in between. If I haven’t put you to sleep with my ramblings, please like my Facebook page. If you’re one of the cool kids who don’t use Facebook, follow this blog via email. You won’t have to worry about spam, because I’m inconsistent like that.

Death, the one thing that comes to us all. The one thing that we keep ignoring, because don’t we all have other pressing matters to attend to? We insulate ourselves from the concept of death right from childhood. When we do come to terms with our mortality, we realize that death is the worst thing that could happen to someone. Thus, we begin living our lives, ignorant about our impending demise. One could almost say that we are ignoring our deaths, rather than being ignorant about it. But none of us can tune out that little itch at the back of our heads in its entirety. That low voice reminding us that death is creeping nearer every passing second.

But here’s the thing. We never engage ourselves in thoughts about death. We do not think about it the way we should. Our minds are like dragonflies that keep shuttling from one twig to another. When we let our minds wander, our train of thoughts might take us to think about death and mortality. But our conscious mind makes it no more than a fleeting thought, flying off to a different thought, like the dragonfly. At this point, there are two statements that we need to consider and accept as facts. One, we will die. Every last one of us. Two, most of us are scared of death, of our mortality. We try not to think about it, or somehow try to postpone it, only to fail.

So great is our fear of death, that some of us go to extreme lengths to delay or even avoid it, without any success. As Ernest Becker has written, everything we do in our lives is a way of managing our fear of death. This death denial is central to our lives and the lives of people we create. Popular culture is full of such characters mortified of their own deaths. This irrational fear of death drives them to act. By avoiding death, they become immortal, which sets them apart from everyone else. Voldemort, attempting to be immortal, creates horcruxes by splitting his soul. Even the name Voldemort translates to “flight from death”, thus foreshadowing his fear of the end.

Even as a child, Anakin Skywalker is afraid of his mortality and that of his mother. This fear clouds his judgement, which Yoda sees through. It drives him to violence, to kill, and gives him a semblance of controloverdeath, though momentary. He is then confronted with two systems that have differing views on death. The path of the Sith, to indulge in passions and seek control over death, is tempting to Anakin. The Jedis, as we know, are more resigned to death, treating it like a friend, an inevitable event. In the end, Anakin chooses the path that he thinks gives him control over death. This tension within him, that fear of death is what drives him to the dark side.

We fear death, not because we stop existing after we die. We fear death because we know we will miss out on the future. Call it existential FOMO. It is hard to accept that there will be, in the future, conversations, events and moments that we will not be part of. As James Gleick has written in Time Travel,

The past, in which we did not exist, is bearable, but the future, in which we will not exist, troubles us more. I know that in the vast expanse of space, I am an infinitesimal mote – fine. But confinement to an eyeblink of time, as an instant never to return, is harder to accept.

But this existential FOMO is nothing more than a constructed fallacy, if you think about it. As Thomas Nagel says, if you don’t feel a deep sense of loss, at what you missed before you were even alive, why should you feel loss at what you’ll miss after you die? You have missed thousands of years of human civilisation, so why feel sorrow at missing out on the future?

But long before you and I, Socrates rejected the fear of death. According to Socrates, death was not something to be afraid of, so men should face it with calm. He proposed that death could be one of two things. Death might either be an eternal dreamless sleep, or it could be a passage to another life. If it was the former, it would be a pleasant experience, a nice rest after a long life. And that is not scary. If death was the latter, a passage to another life, then we would get the chance to hang out with other people who have already died. And isn’t that a wonderful experience in itself, Socrates thought. So either way, death was not a scary ordeal, it was just something that happened to every one, a great equalizer.

“And they die
An equal death, – the idler and the man
Of mighty deeds.” – Homer

A solitary writer in a darkened room, staring hard at the empty sheet of paper in front of him, wishing his thoughts would fill the sheet already. Over him, death looms large, eagerly counting down the seconds, waiting to strike him dead.

This little rant might come off as entitled and insensitive, but I believe I’m talking for everyone when I address this issue. It’s something that affects a silent majority of us in the world. We remain silent and let it go on, not because we’re weak, but because we’re nice to others. And we have patience people can only dream of. You’ll find us everywhere, by the pool, in shopping malls, beside you on the subway, and most of us will be craning our necks down towards our phones.

The issue I’m talking about is, obviously, SMS-speak in text messages. Or to make myself clear, typng lyk dis. Why people do this has always been beyond me. Is the recipient not worth spending a bit more time on? What have you to gain from typing in shorthand? What do you exactly plan to do with the extra time you save from not typing out full words and sentences? Now granted, some might defend this behaviour and point out that most people type this way to be able to reply faster to the people they care about; they want to get their thoughts across that much faster. But to that, I retort, bullshit.

She’s probably typing ‘K’.

I will however concede that more than a decade ago, before there ever were smartphones and annoying Instagram Stories and fascist right-wing regimes in democratic countries, text messages were a precious resource. They had a 160-character limit and you had to pay by the number of texts you sent. Add to that the fact that most phones of that era had a numeric keypad. That is sufficient justification for SMS-speak. You had a character limit, which if crossed, cost you money and it was pretty difficult to type in the first place.
But guess what, times have changed. Text messages are cheap and plentiful and besides, who even uses texts when you have instant messengers galore? We now have mobile phones the size of our palms (sometimes two) and with more computing power than even the fastest supercomputers of the 80s. These phones have touch-sensitive glass screens with on-screen QWERTY keyboards that appear and disappear as we need them to. Now that I’ve stated the obvious, let’s look at what’s on offer.

Double ‘K’ attack!

You have a QWERTY keyboard at your disposal, multiple messaging platforms to communicate, with no limits on the number of characters or the type of media you can send. Except Twitter, maybe. Twitter is the like the weird kid in class. Stoic and laconic. And overrun with hate speech. So what’s your excuse for typing like it’s 2002? For me, the answer is clear. Laziness. In 2017, the only excuse you have for typing in SMS-speak, is pure, unadulterated laziness. I mean, think about your friend who texts you ‘K’. Is she/he an asshole? No, they’re pretty great in real life. And yet you find yourself rolling your eyes everytime someone texts you ‘K’. It’s just THREE more characters, why do you do this to us?

“Wat is it?” literally has just ONE character less than “What is it?”

And yet, we strive, silently, without complaining, for a better future where people aren’t lazy assholes when it comes to typing, or a future where Elon Musk’s NeuraLink turns all of us into telepathic weirdos wizards, and there is no need for any of us to type and communicate. But until such a day comes, please be mindful of others and don’t reply with ‘K’. And type out full English words, like you were taught in school. I’ll be honest, I’m half expecting a comment with just ‘K’ in it.

And people wonder why it’s still unread.

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I remember the river that once flowed, tirelessly creating its path. It cut through forests and grasslands on its way. It met rocks, huge ones. The river could not move those giants, but it did wear them out, shape them according to its will. But the river did not care, for it did not find meaning in what it did. It just flowed. At least, that’s how I looked at it.